Oddly in exile.

I had a crush on this boy that lived in a different city for quite some time, and by one of those unforeseeable changes in life, he ended up moving to my city. Eventually, I asked him out, and we had two dates: the first time, seeing A Star Is Born; and in the second one, we had lunch and saw some architecture exhibition. During the second time, after we left a museum, he told me about a conversation he had with some of his students. They told him about this kid that killed himself after being bullied for being gay. He also knew one of those stories and told me his.

I also knew one.

I told him that day about this guy I went to high school with that jumped off a bridge. We weren’t friends but I remember that he was already out by that time. As we walked, we got to the conclusion that probably every queer person knows a story or two like this one. Maybe more…

After that, we hugged and went to different directions.

There was a third date that ended up not being a date after all because it was raining cats and dogs, and he had brought some friends along and I remember being kind of a dick about it. From that day, I only remember someone saying anything about the importance of remembering our stories, our gay, lesbian, bi, transgender stories.

Those three dates ended up not becoming anything.

However, they were the first thing that came to my mind after seeing yesterday’s RuPaul Drag Race’s finale and Yvie Oddly’s deserving coronation. More specifically, after watching her and Brooke Lynn Hytes’ lipsynch battle of Gaga’s The Edge of Glory.

For her performance, Yvie didn’t rely on any complicated trick, or one of those now used-more-than-they-should-be reveals, and as a perfect metaphor of her entire journey in the show, she had only her body and its limitations. So, she used them and did in a way that gave the season’s narrative the only possible finale: her victory.

But it was her outfit, or should I say, her headpiece that had a second face hidden that made me climb this melancholic memory hill.

Yvie had two faces: one looking forward and the other, at the same time, looking back, much like a drag queen version of the Roman God Janus, who like Yvie in that outfit, is represented as a two-headed man, looking to the past and to the future, learning and applying the knowledge; being the same, by constantly changing.

Janus’ image always moved me, way before I knew Yvie, I must confess.

The first time I got to know his name was while reading one essay by André Aciman, an author whose body of work is the main subject of my master’s thesis that focuses on how he deals with memory and nostalgia throughout his novels. Aciman, for those who do not know, was forced to flee Egypt with his family and this fracture, an unhealable one as Edward Said described the experience of exile, makes him look into the past to find a way to deal with his own future. Exile makes someone not being in a single timeline but in several. The exiled subject is both in the present and the past. Both here and there and as a consequence, he is never anywhere, in any time; always stuck in between things and experiences.

Isn’t being gay a way of being exiled?

By that I mean exiled within your own society, being an active part of it, and at the same time, being constantly asked to stay out of it; to keep your sexuality to yourself – whatever that means – and not bother anyone with it. Isn’t the queer experience the same as the exiled person’s because we are forced to carry our people’s past as if it was our own as well? Again, for whatever that means. Aren’t our experiences so alike because we need to pass our history and stories forward because we live in fear of they being forgotten and with forgetting, empathy vanished, and indifference coming toward us?

It is tiring.

The borders are being closed.

Again, Yvie Oddly danced to a Gaga’s song wearing a two faces mask and that left a mark on me. And Yvie’s performance made me realize that even though they are a heavy burden to carry, the memories and stories of a community that have been surviving blow after blow and that it is still somehow standing, propels us to our futures and they give us some sense of collectiveness that some people never get to experience even though they might live in a way which society allows to exist within its borders.

It is rewarding.

The borders are never fully closed.

Yvie’s drag, like Janus, is past and future together, is change and permanence at the same time. Yvie’s drag makes me look into my own past and remember that I liked writing but haven’t written anything new for quite some time.

And here I am writing about exile, past, future and a drag queen show.

About being gay.

About living gay.